The function of literature

The function of
literature
Does it really have a function?


What is reading literature
for?
• A exact teacher in high school: what is
reading literature for?
• It is imaginative writing: not really true
• Life is too short to read such writings?
• In short, literary book is a “BIG ZERO”
• Let’s read books on religion,
philosophy or engineering, which are
more useful.


The function of literature:
a long history
• Plato: “many contend that literature’s
primary function is moral, its chief
value being its usefulness for hidden
or undisclosed purposes”
• Aristotle: “Literary work is a “work of
art” that can be analyzed and broken
down into various parts, with each
part contributing to the overall
enjoyment of the work itself”


The basic debate

• Is literary function is to teach? Or to
entertain?
• Can we read a text for ‘merely”
pleasure? Or do we have to learn and
think about what we read?
• Such questions might have some
possible answers (this belongs to
literary theory)
• Theory answers: ontology and
epistemology


Read the text!
• This is the only way to understand
whether we read for pleasure or to
learn something
• Two methods:
– Academic
– Non-academic
• Same epistemology but different


Understanding a text
1.Join the class, read the text,
appreciate the text, criticize it using
particular perspectives to come the
an interpretation on the text.
2.Stay up late, read the text, page by
page, get involved with the plot,
the characters, get drowned in the

secondary world (or finally find the
murderer in a mystery novel)


Understanding a text is
not a simple question
• . ‘underlying our private and public
relations and our scholarly critiques and
analyses is our literary theory, the
fountained of our most intimate and our
most public declarations’
• ‘the formal study of literary theory
therefore enables us to explain our
responses to any text and allows us to
articulate the function of literature in an
academic and personal way.’


Some tentative ideas on
the function of literature
• Educative function
• Entertaining
function
• Experience of life
• Language function
• Cultural function
• Ideological function

• Add other
functions:

• _______
• _______
• _______
• _______